There's Something Wrong With You
by Thaddeus MacChuzzlewit
Summary: Everyone in life carries around a certain amount of baggage. Some are allotted their first piece while they're still very young, some a little older.
1. Age 3

Peter Newkirk

* * *

><p>He can remember the first time he figured it out.<p>

It was the week before Christmas and his mum had taken him along to the post to pick up a package from Aunt Flossie. The trip had taken them out of the neighbourhood Peter knew, and he'd been fascinated by the shiny shoes and long thick coats swishing past him on the street. He was only three, but Mum was pregnant with Mavis and she'd told him he was a great help to her.

He believed her because when they left the post office she let him carry the pound cake from their aunt, even though it was store bought, and still wrapped up in silver foil. He knew they were supposed to be very grateful for Aunt Flossie's contribution to their Christmas table. Peter didn't cry the whole way there, even when his feet got sore, because he could tell from his Mum's eyes that she was upset.

She had always told him he was clever but he still couldn't understand why her face went red when people looked at her old coat, which wouldn't button up over her growing belly. He liked the fact that he could see a strip of that faded green dress underneath. It was the same colour as her eyes, and it made him happy.

His Mum stopped to look in a shop window, and he remembered looking at the pound cake and wondering if he could fit it under his jacket so he could keep his hands warm. His Mum had told him that this was a special treat they would only get at Christmas, so he was careful not to crinkle the silver foil as he folded one lapel over it.

Suddenly a large hand had ripped the cake from his grasp, and another hand grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. He remembered being frightened and looking up to see a man in an apron shouting at him. He kept using words that Peter knew would get his own mouth washed out with soap, and saying something about a thief and a guttersnipe. Then his Mum was there and the man was shouting at her, and her cheeks were very red and he thought it was all much too loud.

The man wanted a receipt from his Mum and she was talking faster and faster, but the man in the apron went back into the shop, and he took their pound cake with him. Then they went home and his Mum rubbed the back of his neck where it was red and sore, and then she sang him a song and put him to bed. But the walls of their flat were very thin, and he could still hear her crying in the next room after she shut the door.

There was no store-bought pound cake to eat that Christmas, and Peter realised that the only reason the man had been angry at them was because they were pretending to be the type of people that _do _eat store-bought pound cake. Nobody ever got angry at him when he carried home jellied eel from the shop. Somehow the store keeper had known that Peter had no right to be carrying around something that precious. The thought made him feel yucky inside.

Years later the memory is blurry, but he never completely forgets.

* * *

><p><em>I'm only one character ahead of myself, so here's my motivation to keep writing: Next Hero up is Louis LeBeau.<em>


	2. Age 5

Louis LeBeau

* * *

><p>LeBeau doesn't even remember the first time he realised people saw something different about him. Not because he has tried to forget, but because he never deemed it significant enough to remember.<p>

Louis LeBeau was at his cousin's birthday party, grudgingly seated across from the birthday boy at the kitchen table. They were waiting for Tante Babette to finish icing the cake, and Louis was bored. His cousin was annoying, and had spent most of the party taunting Louis about the fact that he was turning seven, and Louis was still only five.

For the occasion of her baby's seventh birthday, Tante Babette had bought a new box of crayons with fifteen different colours. Louis knew this for sure because he was clever and he had counted.

Each child had been given a piece of paper and encouraged to draw a picture while they waited for the cake. Louis glanced over to the boy with a runny nose on his left to see what he was drawing.

"What's that say?" he pointed.

"It says Pascal. I wrote my name down, and now I'm drawing my family."

Louis reached out for a nice red crayon, red like the spice paprika. "I'm going to draw my family too."

He used the red crayon to draw his father, because his father often wore a red shirt in the kitchen while he cooked. Then he took a blue crayon to draw his cousin because that was the colour of bath water, and Louis hated taking baths. He snickered to himself quietly while he did this, and hoped his cousin would notice the insult.

There was a green crayon similar in colour to the shirt his mother had pressed for him to wear that morning. So LeBeau carefully traced himself out in green in the centre of the page, oblivious to the fact that he was leaving himself with no room for the rest of his large extended family.

The little boy with the runny nose leaned in to look at his picture. "Who's that one?"

Louis put down his crayon. "I'm the one in the middle, that one there is my cousin and that's my father."

Blinking at him, the little boy frowned. "That can't be you. That person is too big. You're really short. It must be someone else."

Louis flushed red as his father's shirt. He jumped down off of his chair and stared up at the other boy. "Don't say that. I'm not short."

His insulter jumped down as well, finding this much more interesting than the pictures. "Yes you are. You are tiny and you look silly."

Holding up one hand, Louis showed him, "I'm five. My dad says I just haven't growed up yet."

"I'm five too. You're short."

Louis shoved him to the ground and landed on top, pulling at the boy's sweater and knocking him in the face once.

Tante Babette pulled them apart moments later, and took this opportunity to wipe the little boy's nose for him. She was very upset with them for fighting inside the house.

"Yes, Pascal, it is true that Louis is short. But it is rude of you to say things like that. Louis is short and you are not. You, Pascal, have curly hair, and Louis does not." She stared at the two children in front of her, spatula dripping icing on the floor as she set her hands on her hips. "Neither of these things matter, because they are on the outside. Do you see? What matters is that you are both good boys on the inside. Now apologise to each other and go play in the living room."

Ten minutes later when the cake was ready and the table set, Tante Babette came into the living room to find the two boys playing together happily with a set of toy soldiers.

The only thing Louis still remembers about that party is the fact that his aunt's cake tasted especially delicious, and that was the first time he discovered you could mix cocoa powder in icing to make it chocolate flavoured.

* * *

><p><em>It turns out that deadline stress makes it harder to write, not easier. Oh well. Drumroll please, for our next Hero: James Kinchloe.<em>


End file.
